The intellectual heart of UC Berkeley, the College of Letters and Science (L&S) is the largest of the university’s 14 colleges and schools and the most prestigious teaching and research unit in the UC system.

The College of Letters & Science stands at the heart of Berkeley’s intellectual preeminence and comprehensive excellence. Our continued leadership in education, research, and public service depends on private philanthropy.

May 16, 2018

Based on an analysis of the genomes of 107 different species of mammals, University of California, Berkeley, scientists in the Department of Integrative Biology conclude that our distant ancestors – the small, furry creatures that scurried around the feet of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago – were mostly insect eaters. Read more...

May 14, 2018

A team led by Eva Nogales, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has now determined the detailed structure of the tau protein when bound to microtubules. The tau protein is a key player in Alzheimer's disease. Read more...

May 12, 2018

Thousands of graduates decked out in black caps and gowns marched into California Memorial Stadium to “Pomp and Circumstance” to celebrate UC Berkeley’s May commencement on Saturday. Chancellor Carol Christ delivered the keynote speech to an audience of more than 35,000, including some 5,500 graduates.

May 11, 2018

Graduating computer science major Luke Strgar thinks he might have a solution for the fraught issue of guns in America: use blockchain to track gun sales. And while many graduates were wrapping up final papers, Strgar spent two days in Washington, D.C. pitching his idea to legislative aides and think-tank analysts from all sides of the ideological spectrum.

May 10, 2018

As North Korea’s president goes back and forth on “denuclearization,” an international team of scientists is publishing the most detailed view yet of the site of the country’s latest and largest underground nuclear test on Sept. 3, 2017. Rear more...

May 4, 2018

As a girl, L&S senior Chansitha Ouk didn’t go to school. Born in Cambodia during the civil war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge, Ouk grew up in a refugee camp in Thailand. But on Saturday, May 12, she will join more than 5,000 graduating seniors at UC Berkeley as they make their joyous walk across the Greek Theatre stage — a feat she never dreamed possible.

May 2, 2018

The international team that developed Jupyter, which was co-led by UC Berkeley’s Fernando Pérez, is now being recognized with the 2018 Software System Award from the Association of Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of educational and academic computer scientists. Read more...

May 1, 2018

A chemist, two neuroscientists, a geophysicist and a computer scientist at UC Berkeley are among 84 new members and 21 new foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences announced today. Read more...

April 30, 2018

When Starbucks announced plans to conduct anti-bias training at its 8,000 outlets following the unprovoked arrests of two African-American customers in Philadelphia, UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton was at once impressed and skeptical. Read more...

What if we could edit the sensations we feel; paste in our brain pictures that we never saw, cut out unwanted pain or insert non-existent scents into memory? UC Berkeley neuroscientists are building the equipment to do just that! Read more...

It was a long-distance duet — a violist on Faculty Glade and a carillonist in the towering Campanile. They couldn’t see or communicate with each other, but their Thursday noontime concert, part of a music department course called Music Now, was a successful exercise in performing across a large space. Nils Bultmann, the violist, who also is a composer and a guest professor in the department, says the course is about “sound literacy and listening."

April 25, 2018

This article was written by Ada Locke, an undergraduate senior in the College of Letters & Science. She will be graduating this Spring with a degree in Molecular & Cell Biology. Throughout her time as a student, she has participated in several physical education program classes (and loved them).

April 23, 2018

The latest research from Dr. Leslea Hlusko, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, and her lab shows that you never know where basic research is going to take you. "The critical role that breast feeding plays in infant survival may have led, during the last ice age, to a common genetic mutation in East Asians and Native Americans that also, surprisingly, affects the shape of their teeth." Read more...

Dr. Leslea Hlusko, a faculty member in the Department of Integrative Biology, blogs about her Cal Day experience serving on a Science@Cal panel talking about encouraging young women into the sciences. Read more...

April 20, 2018

Scientists from the Department of Integrative Biology obtained special permits to display kelp forest sea creatures in the Valley Life Sciences Building for Cal Day. Among the animals to be seen, there's an octopus and hundreds of its eggs! Watch the video.

Professor Emeritus George Oster, who held a joint faculty appointment in Molecular & Cell Biology and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, passed away on April 15, 2018. Read more...